Mystery Goose

[dragoness_e]

Yesterday, we went for a brief walk in the park--a walk that turned out much briefer than we planned, due to the gust front blowing in and chilling the place down with icy winds and lowering dark gray clouds. After feeding the usual suspects, we saw an unusual goose along the shore of the swamp pond. It was much too trim and shy to be one of the big domestic geese; I suspected it to be a wild visitor, like the Canadas that drop by.


Mystery Goose



I took my pictures home and, after a brief search at All About Birds, found out that he is definitely a wild goose--a Blue Goose, which is the blue morph of the Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens)

Blue (Snow) Goose



Snow Geese breed in the high arctic, and winter down here on the coast. There are lots of Snow Geese; the population has been climbing in leaps and bounds since the mid-20th century, and are overpopulating their nesting grounds.

Comments

[jill-dragon.livejournal.com]

Not surprising given that we've killed off most of their natural predators in one way or another.

Nice photos, I've never seen a wild goose with that coloration. :)

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

Neither had I. I had no clue what it was, except that it was much more shy and slimmer than the domestic geese local to the park. Once you've been around both, the difference between a domestic animal bred for meat and a wild relative is fairly noticeable. The domestic Chinese geese and gray geese are quite heavy-bodied; this goose isn't.